From Jaylin Sellers' Star Turn to a Defensive Uptick and the Return of Jason Edwards, What's Gone Into Providence's Surprising Turnaround?

Photo courtesy of Carl Rizzo at gameone_photography and Friarbasketball.com

Raise your hand if you saw this coming a month ago.

As January drew to a close, things couldn’t have looked bleaker in Providence. The Friars were 2-9 in Big East play through 11 games. In the transfer portal era, the assumption was that the team would splinter and the final month of the season would be a slow crawl to the offseason.

Providence has been down like this before and flipped the season. It almost felt like a rite of winter under Ed Cooley.

Cooley was 6-21 in his first 27 career Big East games, and PC was 2-7 in league play entering February of his second season — but that team won five of six in February to turn the program around.

Ensuing seasons saw closing stretches like winning six in a row to end 2017 with a 10-8 league mark, taking four straight late in 2016 after a 5-8 stretch during Kris Dunn’s final year, and winning six consecutive games to close out 2020.

Following Saturday’s 79-76 win at Creighton, Providence has won three consecutive games and wrapped February with a 5-2 mark.

On Saturday, it was Jaylin Sellers donning the Superman cape yet again. The graduate guard scored 27 points and made all sorts of enormous plays late against a Creighton team that simply had no one physically capable of slowing him down.

Add some late buckets by Jason Edwards (18 points) and improved board work out of Oswin Erhunmwunse (8 points, 11 rebounds, 3 blocks) in the second half, and Providence had enough to withstand multiple Creighton runs late.

So, how has Providence turned it around over the last month?

Jaylin Sellers has made a star turn.

Dating back to his 36-point night in a double overtime win over Butler, Sellers has put this team on his back. On Saturday versus Creighton, it wasn’t just the point total (27), or efficient shooting (11-18 FG, 5-8 3PT), it was the timeliness of his buckets.

Providence deserved to win on Saturday. They led for over 31 minutes and trailed for under three, but how often do we see home teams in this league stay connected and pull out a win late? How often had we seen the Friars let one slip away this season?

After Sellers scored to put PC ahead, 62-56, with nine minutes to play, Creighton countered with an 8-0 run to take a 64-62 lead. Sellers knocked down a leaner in traffic on the ensuing possession, however, to tie the game up and settle PC back in.

Over the final five minutes Sellers just made huge shots:

• Creighton’s Jasen Green hit a 3-pointer to push the Jays ahead by a point with five minutes left. Sellers countered with a three of his own on the next possession.

• At the 3:24 mark, Sellers took Josh Dix into the post and overpowered him for a score to push the Friars ahead, 71-67.

• And finally, after Creighton cut PC’s lead to a point with under 30 seconds left, Sellers scored on an up-and-under move with 16 seconds to go to make it 79-76.

Sellers has been a star over the past month and just might have played his way into First Team All-Big East status.

In February, he averaged 24.0 points per game on 62% shooting inside the arc and 56% beyond.

Here’s the best of Sellers from Saturday:

An Uptick Defensively

Somewhat quietly, Providence’s defense was serviceable over the month of February.

From a Defensive Rating standpoint, Providence ranked eighth in the league in February, ahead of Xavier, Butler, and Georgetown, and just behind Creighton.

Their 113.2 mark during that stretch isn’t sterling (33rd percentile nationally), but the question throughout the year was how this team might fare with even an okay defense.

The Friars still rarely steal the ball, but considering how frequently they’d had to rotate bodies in and out of the lineup over the last month, the step forward is commendable.

The Return of Jason Edwards

Divisive as his game may be, Providence is 4-1 in the five games Edwards has appeared in since returning from his foot injury on Feb. 7.

In those five games, Edwards is averaging 19.0 points a night, shooting 62% from two, and 36% from three. He’s also averaging 3.0 assists versus 2.0 turnovers in 28 minutes a game.

Edwards made a pair of big plays late offensively, hitting a leaner with under three minutes left in a two-point game, and then drawing a foul on an out-of-bounds play after English called timeout on a possession that was going nowhere.

A Kinder Schedule

Providence’s January schedule was tough. It kicked off with back-to-back games versus St. John’s and UConn, followed by a trip to Xavier days later, before returning home to host Villanova.

The second half of January included road trips to Marquette, UConn, and Villanova.

The Friars’ five wins in February came against Creighton (8-11 in the Big East), Butler (6-12), Xavier (6-12), and a sweep of DePaul (7-10).

That’s part of the frustration with the St. John’s loss turning into the debacle that it became. Providence was leading at the time of the dust-up, and in light of how the rest of the month has gone, who wouldn’t have loved to have found out what could have transpired on that afternoon?

Alternatively, there’s a chance that the St. John’s game brought this team together further. They are 3-0 since then and have a chance to finish 5-0 if they can take care of business against Marquette at home and then close out the season with a win at Georgetown.

Providence gets Duncan Powell back on Wednesday and seems likely to return Stefan Vaaks from the flu, while Corey Floyd Jr.’s return remains TBD.

A month ago, this team looked lost. They weren’t defending, injuries forced the lineup to shift on a nightly basis, and they were seemingly finding ways to come up short in the clutch moments.

Yet with an uptick defensively, the return of Edwards, and Sellers’ star turn, the Friars enter March with momentum — and no one saw that coming a month ago.